The Anglo Saxon Conquest of England

1

The Anglo-Saxon Conquest of England

By the late fourth century, England and Wales had been part of the Roman Empire for about 350 years. Roman Britain had many towns and about 30 cities, connected by an extensive and well-built road network. Most of the population spoke a Celtic language, but some spoke and wrote in Latin. Society was organised, government functioned, and trade was conducted using Roman law. England, Wales and much of both Scotland and Ireland were part of a continent-wide trade system. Goods from places as far away as Turkey and Egypt were traded for tin, corn and other cargoes from Britain.

By the mid-ninth century, Britain was very different. Most of the people in what had become England spoke an entirely different language. Roman law had disappeared. It had been replaced by a rapidly-developing system based on Germanic tribal custom. The towns and cities had been largely abandoned, but were slowly being redeveloped. In simple terms, in the year 400 AD most people thought of themselves as Roman citizens. By 850 they did not.

Those changes had been accompanied by several wars. Many of them were fought between the descendants of the Romano-British inhabitants and people who were, or were descended from, Germanic invaders. We now call those people Anglo-Saxons and we know that, broadly, they won. However, that was by no means inevitable. For more than a century it seemed unlikely. We know very little about those wars.

The change from Roman Britain to Anglo-Saxon England was not just a matter of warfare. There was major social, political, economic and cultural change as well. But war was a major factor. War can, and has, changed the fate of continents; and can do so astonishingly quickly. War was hugely important in this period. It was a period of much violence, brutality and main force. The wars by which Roman Britain became Anglo-Saxon England are the main subject of this book.

If there was someone called Arthur, someone who we now know as ‘King’ Arthur, what role did he play? It does seem that he, and others like him, were key figures in those wars. That is why we shall sometimes call those conflicts ‘King Arthur’s wars’. But no matter what role he played, no one man could be responsible for the course and outcome of a series of wars which stretched over 450 years.

The English have forgotten. They remember the Norman Conquest. There were only about 7,000 Norman invaders; perhaps as many as 10,000. With their families and retainers, the total may have been 20-30,000 people. They took over England in roughly 20 years. They had a major impact on society. Within a generation, over 70% of all men had names of French origin: Roberts, Williams, Hughs, Johns and so on. Arguably, however, the Normans had little impact on the law or the language. Today the English speak English, not Norman French. The Normans made several laws, but did not change the underlying basis of the law. The Anglo-Saxon conquest (if conquest it was) took far longer: about 450 years. 450 years from the Norman Conquest would take England into the reign of Henry the Eighth, arguably England’s first post-medieval king.

The English are unlike many other Europeans. They do not, like most of western Europe, have a Roman law code. A law code is the basis for the way society is run, government is conducted, and trade takes place. Laws and legal systems are written statements of observed and enforceable social, political and economic norms. So the fundamental basis for the way in which England is run is very different from that of much of Europe. That difference has had major implications; for example, in Britain’s relationship with the European Union.

Roman law triumphed elsewhere, for several reasons. Most of them did not apply in a society which, like post-Roman Britain, had largely collapsed. Britain is the only major region of the former western Roman empire which did not develop a Latin-based language. England is different. The Germanic takeover of England took centuries and had a major impact. The use of a Germanic language (which is closer to Frisian Dutch than any other similar language) suggests that Roman structures of law and society largely disappeared. They were rebuilt by Germanic incomers and their successors. The difference is important. Without the Germanic takeover, Britain might still be called Britain, as it was in Roman times. But England would not be the land of the English. The English language would probably not exist. The United States, the Commonwealth, and several other countries would not exist as they do now. Many million people around the world would not speak English. America might be ‘the Land of the Free’, but its constitution would be very, very different.

Terminology is highly important in this area. Terms like ‘Dark Age’, ‘Celtic’, ‘Anglo-Saxon’ and ‘British’ are often used loosely. That can be a problem. In this book they will have fairly specific meanings. ‘Britain’ will be taken to mean the whole of the British Isles, whilst ‘Roman Britain’ will mean that part of Britain which the Romans conquered. Put simply, that means England south of Hadrian’s Wall (thus excluding much of Northumberland), and Wales. Southern Scotland was an important part of the Roman Imperial system and will be discussed later.

The question of what ‘Celtic’ means is important. Here it is used very narrowly to describe culture and language. Before the Roman conquests, much of western Europe had something broadly described as Celtic culture and spoke Celtic languages. So when we refer to ‘Celtic’ in Britain, we mean the language and culture that underlay Latin and Roman culture. By extension, ‘Romano-British’ is a general term to describe the largely Celtic-speaking people who lived in Britain at the end of imperial Roman rule. They didn’t go away or disappear. By and large they were conquered, or taken over, by what we now call the Anglo-Saxons.

The origins of the Anglo-Saxons were Germanic. Many of the original invaders came from what is now north Germany, the Netherlands (especially Frisia) or Denmark. They are described in historical sources as Angles, Saxons and Jutes. By the tenth century or so, the term ‘Anglo-Saxon’ had been coined to differentiate their successors from the Romano-British. By then, however, almost none of the ‘Anglo-Saxons’ had ever been to Germany. Their ancestors had lived in England for centuries.

‘Saxon’ requires very careful consideration. The Romans used it fairly loosely, in the way the we might now say ‘German’ or perhaps ‘Germanic’. Many people who we now think of as having Saxon origins (such as the people of Wessex) never used the term to refer to themselves. To reduce ambiguity, we will use ‘Saxon’ in one of two specific ways. The first, and least important, is to refer to people who come from the region of north Germany around Hannover: Saxony. The second is to refer to the people of what became the kingdoms of the East, South and West Saxons: Essex, Sussex and Wessex respectively.

‘Welsh’ requires even more careful use. The word is derived from a Germanic word for ‘foreigner’. The word has developed to describe several peoples who lived beyond the borders of where Germanic people lived. Hence ‘Wallis’ (the German name for the French-speaking canton of Valais in Switzerland); ‘Wallachia’ in Romania (the principality beyond Transylvania, where many Germanic people had settled); and ‘Wales’. Unfortunately for us, the Anglo-Saxons called the Romano-British ‘foreigners’, hence ‘Welsh’. That leads to confusion because, for example, a Germanic warrior in Kent in the fifth century (who was by origin possibly a Jute from Jutland) might call the Romano-British inhabitants of London or Surrey ‘Welsh’. To avoid that confusion we shall call those people ‘Romano-British’, and keep the word ‘Welsh’ for the inhabitants of Wales. They are, after all, inhabitants of what we now call Wales. They are descended from the Romano-British, and still what the Anglo-Saxons would have called ‘foreigners’ (hence to that extent ‘Welsh’). Modern Wales is, essentially, the part of Roman Britain which the Anglo-Saxons never conquered.

The inhabitants of Ireland had a Celtic culture and language, as did most of Scotland. Some confusion arose in the past because there are broadly two main forms of Celtic language in Britain. They are known as ‘p’ and ‘q’ Celtic, or alternatively ‘Brythonic’ and ‘Goidelic’. The boundary of where those languages were spoken was not well understood, and there was some movement of tribes. Hence, confusingly, a tribe called the ‘Scotti’ were considered to be Irish. We shall use the term ‘Irish’ only to refer to people who lived in Ireland, and ‘Scottish’ to refer to people who lived in modern Scotland. The term ‘Picts’ or ‘Pictish’ will be taken to mean Scots who lived north of the River Firth, where the Romans never settled. The Romans used the term ‘Picti (‘the painted ones’) to describe them from about 300 or 310 AD.

The modern Welsh word for Wales is ‘Cymru’, which is derived from the Romano-British word for ‘companions’. The late Romano-British used it to describe themselves, as opposed to the Anglo-Saxons. One form of it was ‘Cumbroges’, hence Cumbria as a region of the Romano-British. Cumbria was one of the last areas to become Anglo-Saxon. The Romano-British called themselves ‘Britones’ (hence ‘British’) when they wrote in Latin, which they continued to do until after the Norman Conquest. Thus when a Welshman today says he is British, he is absolutely correct.

When were the Dark Ages? The term is used loosely and can mean different things to different people. There is very little if any written record between the end of Imperial Roman Britain and, for example, the writings of the Venerable Bede. The period in between is ‘dark ‘to the extent that little or no historical record illuminates it. We will use the term ‘Dark Ages’ to mean the period from about 400 to about 730 AD. Historians tend to use the term ‘early medieval’, but that can include the period up to the Norman Conquest.

The broad sequence of the Anglo-Saxon conquest of England is quite simple, although the dates are vague (for reasons which we will discuss later). Imperial rule in Britain seems to have ended soon after 400 AD. Some Germanic people were already settled in Britain by then. Increasing numbers arrived in the fifth century, often as warriors to protect the east coast and (to some extent) to replace Roman forces. In the middle of that century (about 450) some of them rebelled. The rebellion was put down, and by about 500 the Germanic element was contained in what we now call East Anglia, Essex, Kent and Sussex. Strictly, East Anglia is the land of the East Anglians. It was divided between the land of the North Folk and the South Folk, hence Norfolk and Suffolk. It does not include the land of the East Saxons, namely Essex. There were probably also groups of Germanic settlers in Lindsey (the area around Lincoln), East Yorkshire, Northumberland, and some other smaller pockets.

That situation lasted for about fifty years. Then, in the middle of the sixth century, separate groups began to fight the Romano-British again, and conquer further territory. The Kingdom of Wessex developed from about 550 AD. Germanic kingdoms developed in Essex, East Anglia, the Midlands, Yorkshire and Northumberland from about 570 AD. By no means all of the fighting was against the Romano-British. The Yorkshire and Northumberland kingdoms fought each other until one man ruled both, as the king of Northumbria. Mercia, the midland kingdom, fought against Northumbria and Wessex for centuries. At times any or all of them were allied to Romano-British kingdoms, whose names are often wrapped in mystery. By about 850 AD Northumbria, Mercia and Wessex had conquered most of modern England, swallowing up the smaller kingdoms of Kent, Essex, Sussex and East Anglia on the way. It was a slow and fitful process. In some areas no progress was made against the Roman-British for a century or so.

King Alfred, the only king in English history be called ‘The Great’, ruled from 871 to 899 AD. He was a king of Wessex and never ruled England. Viking raids had started in 793. Alfred and his contemporaries spent far more time and effort fighting the Vikings than the remaining Romano-British. His son Edward the Elder united England under one throne, not least due to the Viking invasions. England was not free of Viking incursions until after the Norman conquest of 1066. It can, however, reasonably be said that Alfred’s descendants ruled a unified Anglo-Saxon kingdom. The advent of Alfred, and the Vikings incursions, can be seen as the end of the Anglo-Saxon conquest of England.

There are many problems in trying to understand this period. There is almost no historical record and little archaeology. Both disciplines present problems when looking at the Dark Ages. History books tend to describe one of two views of the period, which we can call ‘Edwardian’ and ‘Modernist’. ‘Edwardian’ writers tended to take works such as Bede’s largely at face value. They believed that Britain was invaded by waves of Germanic invaders, who felled the mighty oak forests, ploughed the land, rapidly disposed of the effete and decadent Romano-British, became Christian, and brought democracy and parliamentary government to England. That, of course, is a great simplification, but it exposes two things: the attitudes of the Edwardians, and the relative absence of archaeological evidence in Edwardian times.

According to the ‘Modernist’ view, there were no invasions; just migrations. The cultural shift from Romano-British to Anglo-Saxon was largely peaceful and cultural. Key archaeological issues (such as the fact that many of the Germanic migrants cremated their dead, rather than burying them intact) are taken to reflect peaceful cultural transition rather than conquest. Men started to carry weapons in public as fashion statements, to reflect a peace-loving society(!) The mighty forests were not hewn down: they did not exist, because Britain had been deforested in the Iron Age. That is also a parody, but each of its elements is taken from recent books on the ‘Dark Ages’.

The great works on the subject tend to come from mid- to late-twentieth century. They are the standard text books used at universities. They tend towards the Edwardian rather than the modernist view. The volumes of the Oxford (University) History of England are important amongst them. The first volume, originally written in 1936, was entitled ‘Roman Britain and the English Settlements’, by R. G. Collingwood and J. N. L. (Nowell) Myres. Myres wrote the piece most relevant to us, namely the final five chapters on post-Roman Britain. When the book was re-written fifty years later, Myres re-wrote his work as a separate volume simply called ‘The English Settlements’. He was then 84 years old and it was a mistake to ask him to write it. His thinking had not moved on. The Roman part of the original book was re-written in 1981 by Peter Salway. The succeeding volume, ‘Anglo-Saxon England’, was written by Sir Frank Stenton in 1943.

There is no good, modern, standard reference book which covers our period in general, and the wars between the Romano-British and the Anglo-Saxons in detail. That causes several problems. For example, there may have been a major incursion against Britain by Picts, Saxons and others in or about the year 367 AD. As a result several archaeologists in the early twentieth century dated sites or finds to 367. Some recent writers took that at face value. Indeed much early dating is now considered to be wrong, but there is no way to get writers who only read the Oxford History to understand what is now thought to be right. A related problem is that Bede, who is almost the only (and certainly the most reliable) writer who lived close to the period, only dated nine events relevant to our subject in a period of several centuries. So there is little or no chronological backbone on which to hang events. The fifth and sixth centuries are a critical period, in which Bede provides no useful dates at all.

The Edwardian approach tends to largely overlook the Romano-British, not least because Bede did. It also tends to dwell extensively on the advent of Christianity among the Anglo-Saxons. Well, the Anglo-Saxons may have adopted Christianity much as Bede described it. After all, he was a monk and became a saint. However, the Romano-British were already extensively Christianised. They had churches and bishops long before the end of Imperial Roman Britain, and they survived long after.

Earlier historians tended to cling to the notion of a conquest, and a large migration of Germanic warriors. Newer generations, and particularly archaeologists, increasingly reject that view. Some of them are definitely in the ‘modernist’ camp. The reason is fairly easy to see. History tends to be written by the winners, and from the top down. It looks at kings and the view from the throne. Conversely archaeology tends to look from the bottom up. It often looks at things like huts, farming, and cooking implements. The archaeology shows little direct sign of wars. The two views can be reconciled, but for this period that has not yet happened.

A further problem is that of place names. The names of the locations of events such as battles are known to us from works such as Bede’s or the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Early historians made educated guesses as to where those places were. They then joined those places together to form a picture of how wars took place. Unfortunately the locations are often flawed. They are perhaps wrong; not credible; or lead to seriously misleading conclusions. Unfortunately many writers do not check the original texts against what we now know of the origins of place names. As a result some fairly major myths exist, and will persist unless corrected. A further tendency is to wrap a few place names up with a fairly superficial understanding of warfare. The result is a simplistic view of the strategy of the wars of the Dark Ages.

The two main ways of shining light into the Dark Ages are through history and archaeology. Since the early 20th century, history has been increasingly concerned with the study of documents and other recorded material. To that extent it is not ‘the study of the past’ but ‘insight into what happened in the past, based on what has been written, and what we can say about that’. Some people believe that history can tell us ‘what actually happened.’ That, however, is impossible. The historian cannot do more than collect, assess and interpret evidence. He should then come to some opinion or judgement.

That point is critical. In a criminal trial, the jury must believe that the evidence is convincing ‘beyond all reasonable doubt’. In a civil trial, however, the evidence is only required to be ‘more likely than unlikely’. For the Dark Ages, we cannot be certain ‘beyond all reasonable doubt’. For this book we shall normally make judgements based on evidence that we think is ‘more likely that unlikely’.

The original historical sources, and most modern history books, have great gaps in them. For example: we know that, soon after the Roman invasion, the Iceni revolted in about 61 AD. We know that the Iceni were a tribe based in what is now East Anglia. We also know that, by 500 or so, East Anglia was extensively settled by Anglians. ‘Angeln’, where they came from, is a region of Denmark. How did that happen? What happened to the Iceni? When did it happen? We simply do not know. That is a major gap in our knowledge. There are many others.

Most of the original, historical, source documents we know of are made up of half-truths. They were sometimes collected from lost original texts, or distorted by the interests or ignorance of their authors. The only contemporary source written in England is Gildas’ ‘The Ruin of Britain’. We don’t really know who Gildas was; when or where he was writing; what his occupation was; nor when the events he described took place. He probably wrote in about 540 AD, and he was not writing a history. His main purpose was a religious tirade against the un-Christian behaviour of the rulers of post-Roman Britain. Reading his work today, he comes across as a religious fanatic. He tells us a fair amount about the life and social attitudes of the times, but relatively little about what took place. Even though we believe he wrote in the sixth century, the earliest copy we have is from the tenth. Two other copies are from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. They all show some evidence of amendment from the presumed original.

The next source, in terms of date, is the Historia Britonnum, or ‘History of the British’. It is often referred to by the name of its supposed author, Nennius. One version contains a version of the Annales Cambriae or ‘Welsh Annals’. There are many problems with the use of these works as historic sources. The Medieval and Celtic expert Professor David Dumville strongly criticised any reliance on Nennius and similar Welsh sources, not least because they were written down about 250-300 years after the events to which they relate. In the interim a lot of the material was probably changed by being passed down verbally. The Historia Britonnum has very little detail in the sixth century after the events of Arthur, who probably died in about 530 AD or so. It is of little use as a historical document. If it is not reliable, then there is no way of validating the events described in Welsh legendary poems such as ‘The Book of Taliesin’ and ‘The Book of Aneirin’. Such sources are a good example of what happened when medieval authors tried to marry legendary, narrative material with a dated record. So, apart from Gildas, there is no contemporary British written source from before the ninth century, and later sources are unreliable.

Professor Dumville’s remarks, published in the highly respected journal ‘History’, also had the effect of discouraging respectable academic historians from looking specifically at ‘The Age of Arthur’ (say, 400-550 AD). There had been two quite good books in the 1970s, but nothing of that quality since.

The much-venerated Bede wrote his ‘History of the English Church and People’ in the early 730s AD. Bede was a monk at the monastery at Jarrow. He enjoyed the patronage of the King of Northumbria. He was not British. He was an Anglo-Saxon, which strongly affected what he wrote. Bede paraphrased Gildas for the critical early chapters of his book, which has two main effects. Firstly, it tells us nothing useful about the period up to 550 AD or so which is not mentioned in Gildas. Secondly, several modern writers do not realise that, and have drawn false conclusions. For example, it has been suggested that Bede ‘corroborates’ Gildas. He doesn’t. He repeats Gildas. Bede’s story of the arrival of the Germans in Britain was: not his; written 300 years after the event; and does not actually describe a mass migration, as Edwardian historians tended to assume. His story of the two Germanic leaders Hengest and Horsa is almost definitely legendary. The two names mean something like ‘stallion’ and ‘mare’ respectively. A Germanic warrior quite possibly had the name of nickname of ‘the stallion’. It stretches belief to think that another warrior was called ‘the mare’.

Bede was undoubtedly very pious, and his work is hugely valuable. However, we would now say that ‘he didn’t get out much’. He entered the monastery as a boy and almost never left it until he died aged about 62. Almost anything he wrote came to him, at best, from second hand.

The chronological background to this period comes to us largely from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which was composed over several centuries in the courts of various Anglo-Saxon Kings. It continues well after the Norman Conquest, to 1158. Several versions exist. There are errors, discrepancies and omissions in, or between, all of them. None is the original, and none are particularly early. Some of the early parts are based on Bede, which is of course based on Gildas. Some of it has obviously been made up. For example, in the period 556-592 AD it lists eleven events. Two can be corroborated from other sources, but six of the others fall on leap years. Statistically, that is incredibly unlikely. By probably no coincidence, that section of the Chronicle refers to the foundation of the Kingdom of Wessex. For a long time the Chronicle appears to have been composed in the court of Wessex.

The Chronicle also weaves together what are clearly two different stories of the origins of Wessex. Were the chroniclers trying to get the best of both? It is unlikely that both are true. They are often taken at face value even today, but to academic historians they are obviously a concoction. Researching the wars of the periods reveals only 12 relevant events in a period of 300 to 350 years. Most of them are described in a sentence or two. They tell us some names, actions and places. However, we rarely know who the people were, nor how they were related. Today we have often got the places wrong as well. Several of the references come from outside Britain, and are only of passing relevance. Overall, as Professor Dumville put it, ‘[t]he basic fact is that we have no written English evidence … which pre-dates the seventh century.’

Then, as now, the ownership of pieces of land was recorded in written documents. These land charters were only written for major land transfers. They were typically transfers (grants) from the king to major noblemen, or from the king to the Church. Church charters have generally survived better than the others. A total of about 1600 charters are known to exist, but many relate to the later Anglo-Saxon period. Some are forgeries. Some are copies. Some have been altered in part. There is no clear overall pattern as to which are authentic, and many of them are irrelevant to our purpose. The variation in quality allows for a lot of interpretation, and hence difference of opinion as to what they mean to us.

One other work broadly pre-dates the period, but is hugely relevant. Called the Notitia Dignatatum, it is an official Roman document which can be described as the Master Organisation Table of the Roman Army, worldwide. (It is actually a list of major government officials, but it describes all military unit and formation commanders, and they dominate the list.) Its date is the subject of much discussion. We will look at it in detail in Chapter Two.

Probably the biggest single problem in this area of history is the story of the Rescript of Honorius. A rescript was an official Roman document which recorded the emperor’s personal judgement in response to a petition. Rescripts had the status of law. The Emperor Honorius probably issued hundreds of rescripts during his reign as Emperor from 395 to 423 AD. However, only one is important to us. The story goes that Honorius, in a rescript, ordered the Roman legions to leave Britain (which would then be undefended) in about 410. That, then, was the end of Roman Britain.

This story is hugely important. According to the Edwardian view, one can almost see the Primus Pilus (senior centurion) of the 20th Legion (Valeria Victrix) saluting, turning to the right and jumping on board the last ship to leave Dover, leaving Britain to its fate. That is highly unlikely. The story comes to us from an Eastern Roman (Byzantine) court official called Zosimus. He wrote in the early sixth century, a hundred years after the events he described. He wrote in Greek, not Latin. The relevant passage comes amidst a discussion of the province of Aemilia, which lies around Ravenna where Honorius held his court for several years. It appears to say that Honorius wrote to the cities of Britain, telling them to ‘look to their own defence’, or similar.

That does not say that Honorius ordered the Roman army to leave. Nor does it mention a rescript. Victorian or Edwardian historians invented that, on the grounds that that was what Roman emperors did. The context is questionable, and the original Greek text may have said ‘the city called Bruttia’ or ‘the city of Bruttia’, or similar, rather than ‘the cities of Britain’. Using the word ‘Britain’ is out of context. If a modern academic researcher proposed that the end of Imperial Roman Britain took place that way, on that evidence, he would be laughed at. It is simply not credible by modern academic standards. But, critically, it has long been an accepted statement of fact. The problem arises because our whole understanding of the end of Roman Britain and the origins of Anglo-Saxon England hang around the alleged Rescript of Honorius. Zosimus might even be referring to people in the Roman province of Armorica (Brittany). This problem has many aspects. For example, Zosimus wrote about 100 years after the event. He could, at best, use Byzantine (not Roman, nor Ravenna) court archives. The only corroboration is Gildas, and Gildas is not entirely dependable. The corroboration in Gildas is weak: for example, he does not refer to any writing from Honorius on this subject, let alone a rescript. Zosimus’ account contradicts both the Notitia Dignatatum and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. ‘Bruttia’ may refer to a city in Italy.

The Notitia Dignatatum appears to date from well after 410 AD, and includes the names of all the units in Britain. There were about 60 of them, totalling about 30,000 troops. But the Rescript suggests that all the Roman forces had left in about 410. So was the Notitia wrong, or a fake, or was the part referring to Britain out of date? Historians have jumped through intellectual hoops to explain the Notitia based on the alleged ‘fact’ of the Rescript. Yet it seems more reasonable to believe that the Notitia is correct and that there never was a Rescript. That is, Honorius did not order the Roman Army to leave Britain in or about 410. If that is the case, we have no date for the end of Roman Imperial rule in Britain. It could be anything between, say, 400 and 450 AD. There is actually no good evidence of the Roman Army leaving. What actually happened to it will be discussed later. Regrettably, even highly reputable historians cling to the alleged Rescript as an article of faith.

About a hundred years ago, archaeologists’ and historians’ work overlapped. Both could be described as ‘antiquarians’. However, just as historians came to focus on the analysis of documentary sources, archaeologists came to see themselves as a branch of anthropology (the study of human culture). That is a fascinating area, but not necessarily related to the study of actual events in the past. Indeed, at least one archaeologist has said that his colleagues examine and analyse what they find, leaving it for others to ascribe relevance. Not least, relevance is always (to some extent) subject to the view-point of the beholder. Some historians have criticised that approach, complaining of a tendency to ignore the historical (that is, documentary) evidence. Archaeologists may not be particularly concerned with actual events much at all. They don’t necessarily see it as their job.

By and large, archaeologists don’t study wars: there is very little physical evidence. Some archaeologists study battlefields, and their work can help correct some completely wrong assumptions. An example is the recent discovery of cannon balls and shot on the site of the Battle of Bosworth in 1485 AD. That corrected the assertion (strongly held until then) that the battle had taken place on a different site, a couple of miles away. Archaeologists do consider ‘conflict’, although often in a somewhat bland and general way. Without the historical context, such study is inevitably general. But between conflict in general and individual weapons or battlefields in particular, they cannot tell us much about the conduct of a whole series of wars. For example, we do not know the precise location of a single Dark Age battlefield in England.

Dates are a particular problem. Archaeologists cannot normally specify a precise date without a cast-iron historical link. Such links are rare in the Dark Ages. Archaeologists can provide ‘not before’ and ‘not after’ dates. That can be used to construct quite sophisticated chronologies. Some seem to be quite accurate, but the overall result is only as accurate as the assumptions made in putting it together. For the Dark Ages the result is much less precise than a non-specialist would suspect.

Burials are a major source of evidence for the Dark Ages. The terminology needs to be explained. If the ashes of a cremated body are scattered, there is no way of detecting what happened. However, the ashes of many cremated bodies were buried in small, crude pots. Both the pots and their contents can be analysed. However, the word ‘burial’ strictly refers to both burying ashes in pots and to burying whole bodies (typically in shrouds, coffins or both). Archaeologists use the word ‘inhumation’ to refer to the burial of uncremated bodies. However, for simplicity, we will use the terms ‘cremation’ and ‘burial’ respectively.

Traditionally it was assumed that late-Roman practice was for burials with few, if any, grave goods. Germanic bodies were typically buried aligned north-south with many grave goods, or cremated. Christian burials were normally aligned east-west with the head facing west and no grave goods, and in those days Christians did not cremate their dead. As the Anglo-Saxons adopted Christianity both pagan funeral practices (north-south burials with grave goods, and cremations) died out. So, within a given kingdom, a pagan cemetery can be assumed to pre-date the time when its king adopted Christianity. That picture may be broadly true, but in real life the picture is not that simple. Burial patterns cannot, as some historians have believed, fill in all the gaps in the historical record. Archaeologists are now far less certain of a close and definite link between burial pattern and the ethnicity of the local population. A type of hut known as the ‘Grubenhaus’ or ‘sunken–floored building’ has also been associated with Germanic settlers or migrants. The design is, most probably, imported from the Continent. That does not necessarily tell us that the people who built them were Germanic migrants.

There is a limit to what an archaeologist can tells us. He can stare at brooches as long as he likes, but they will never speak Celtic to him. A brooch will never tell us what language its wearer spoke. Importantly, we cannot be sure of his ethnicity, nor that of his rulers. Some techniques, such as enamelling, were developed in England by Anglo-Saxons. Some weaving techniques were adopted by the Anglo-Saxons from the Romano-British. Artefacts such as brooches might be dated to within 30-40 years, but we cannot know for certain it was a novelty or an antique when it was buried. There is no direct relationship between (say,) pots and people; just general trends.

Similarly with well-preserved bodies found in bogs. Modern scientific methods can tell you where they were born and where they reached puberty. They cannot tell you much about their political affiliation. We cannot know what language they spoke. In any case, language can be a status symbol rather than evidence of race. It is reasonable to believe that in 1080 AD many people in England spoke French or Latin if they could, regardless of where they were born. It is most rare for archaeology to be able to tell us definitively who a person was, what language he or she spoke, nor who his or her ruler was.

Technical breakthroughs in archaeological technique occur from time to time. Carbon dating, pollen analysis and ground-penetrating radar are examples. What follows has been described as a somewhat childlike rush to grasp the new technology and cling to its findings, overlooking anything that contradicts it. There is probably no single magic bullet. Archaeology works slowly, gradually, and sometimes along blind alleys. In general, archaeologists come across as the expert forensic scientists, but not the detectives. Sometimes the detectives are the historians. For the Dark Ages, the historians cannot contribute much.

As we have seen, the written sources were often written well after the event. So, if one says that King ‘X’ reigned for ‘N’ years, how can we be sure? Such statements are not a safe basis for sequencing. We can compare the dates given in the Anglo-Saxon and Welsh chronicles. For the period 600-800 AD just 12 entries can be compared. They only agree in one instance. In that case it refers to an external event which could be validated elsewhere. The dates of only two events differ by five years or more. Sometimes the date in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is earlier than that in the Welsh Annals. In other cases it is the other way around. Thus there is anything up to ten years of possible error. Neither source can be considered to be entirely reliable. From a statistical perspective, each is equally poor. At best, we can generally believe that a given date is probably correct to within five years. In general the two chronicles, and other sources, give us some confidence that given events did take place, but not necessarily as described. They give us some confidence that the sequence is correct, as long as the intervals are not particularly short. They give us less confidence that the stated interval between them is correct. They give us very little confidence as to the precise date, other than probably within plus or minus five years.

There are written genealogies for many Anglo-Saxon royal dynasties. Most of them contain precisely 14 generations and claim descent from a god, typically Wotan. The eighth on the list is typically the first recorded ruler of that kingdom. Comparing pairs of genealogies can give rise to impossible consequences: they cannot both be true. The pattern is typical of the Old Testament. That suggests that the genealogies were concocted by monks, after the adoption of Christianity. That in turn implies that they were not even pagan oral tradition, so we can have very little confidence in them. They are fairly obviously invented, and hence unreliable. Their main purpose may have been political. That is, to give legitimacy to a dynastic succession. Yet it is astonishing that many of them have been used to calculate seemingly precise chronologies for early Anglo-Saxon dynasties.

Many coins can be dated to their year of minting. Tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of Roman coins have been found in Britain. However two major problems face anyone trying to use coins for dating in Dark Age Britain. Firstly, almost no Roman coins were brought to Britain after 407 AD, and the Anglo-Saxons did not start minting coins until the seventh or even eighth centuries. Any coin must have been lost or buried after it was minted, that is ‘not before’ the minting date. All that really means for Dark Age Britain is ‘not before 407’. That could be, say, 408; 508; or even 608.

The condition of a coin can tell us something. Coins are generally usable for